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When a DVD is inserted, a disc icon appears just above the tray. The default behaviour is if you click on the icon, if it is an iso9660 filesystem then it mounts, if it is a DVD video then the mediaplayer starts playing it.

The script for this is /usr/local/bin/drive_all.

I have fixed one thing. If a DVD video is detected, it was launching with "exec defaultmediaplayer dvd://" but in the case of mplayer and gnome-mplayer that only runs the first "chapter" of the DVD and then it exits -- which on some DVDs is just a splash screen.
I have changed it to "exec defaultmediaplayer dvdnav://"

A DVD video is detected by this:

dvd+rw-mediainfo /dev/sr0 | grep 'Mounted Media: .* DVD-ROM'

which usually works. However, I do have one DVD video which actually has a iso9660 f.s. and the line I test gives this:

Mounted Media: 11h, DVD-R Sequential

...so the script thinks it is not a DVD video.

However, running the Gnome-mplayer, if I choose 'File->Disc->Open DVD with menus' then it opens as a normal DVD video, with menus.

The problem is, I don't know how to detect that it is a DVD video. I shouldn't have to mount it to do so, Gnome-mplayer doesn't. Interesting what 'disktype' returns:

Comments:

Posted on 19 Jul 2010, 23:09 by tempestuousDVD-VIDEO definitionMost DVD-related applications I'm aware of (playback/burning/ripping) simply look for the presence of a "VIDEO_TS" folder at the root directory, containing (at the very least) a "VIDEO_TS.IFO" file.

Posted on 20 Jul 2010, 2:01 by linuxcbonvlcI think the easiest is to have VLC play everything, audio video so we don't need any other programs or codecs. OK it's big, but mplayer and libavcodec are big too.

Posted on 20 Jul 2010, 4:56 by TonyDVD PlayingHi Barry, I have yet to find a distro or media player that will reliably handle DVDs.There is always some issue with FF or Rew or chapters etc. If you can crack this we will be well impressed.
Hope health is back to full strength.
Tony

Posted on 20 Jul 2010, 7:44 by zigbertdvd-videoHad to check how Pburn detects a video-DVD, and I am sorry to say; Pburn mounts the disc and looks for a video_ts directory

Posted on 20 Jul 2010, 8:32 by BarryKImproved DVD video detectionOk, this what I now have in /usr/local/bin/drive_all:

Posted on 20 Jul 2010, 8:41 by smil99smplayerHi Barry,
It might be worth it if you take a look at smplayer.

Quote:
SMPlayer intends to be a complete front-end for MPlayer, from basic features like playing videos, DVDs, and VCDs to more advanced features like support for MPlayer filters and more.

Posted on 20 Jul 2010, 11:10 by tempestuousVIDEO_TSBarry, your script looks fine to me. Have you tested it?
It's worth noting that although the DVD drive needs to be unmounted when MPlayer plays a DVD-VIDEO disc, my understanding is that MPlayer (and most other video player apps) actually mounts the DVD drive as part of the playback process.
This highlights the fundamental difference between DVD-VIDEO discs and CD audio discs: CD audio is raw digital data - it has NO file structure whatsoever (thus there is no reliable data verification!) and obviously does not need to be mounted.
DVD video, on the other hand, is media data stored as conventional files within a conventional filesystem. You can browse those files under any operating system.

Regarding VLC; it's the second-best video player appplication in Linux. MPlayer has consistently been the most fully-featured, powerful, reliable media player application in Linux to date. The fact that its development is directly linked to ffmpeg development is testament to this.

Posted on 20 Jul 2010, 15:13 by TonySMPlayerHi smil99, I also suggested SMPlayer as it seems the best of the bunch but as Barry kindly pointed out to me it uses some large libraries which means it would make puppy a lot bigger.

Posted on 21 Jul 2010, 6:57 by FirewavemedisplayersI installed smplayer as GUI for mplayer. It works better than the UI, that comes with quirky, but still isn't perfect. The only depedency on quirky 1.2 was qt.
For DVD playback I use vlc, but I didn't get the UI to work, so I simply use the command-line cvlc, which works the best for DVDs so far. It skips the first few "chapters" and goes right to the inital menu, but the menus work and you can properly FF and rewind.